Abolish it and hand its job back to the states.  By pretty much every measure, we were better off without them for our first 200 years:

Department of Education nearly fails ‘plain writing’ rules with ‘D’

The federal agency that suggests what American schools should teach and grades the performance of millions of students with ever-expanding federal standards barely passes Uncle Sam’s biggest demand: complying with rules to write in plain English.

A new study of how federal agencies write public documents gave the Department of Education an embarrassing grade of “D.” Even the Treasury Department, home to the Internal Revenue Service, got an “A.”

Education’s low grade was one of the highlights of the Center for Plain Language’s annual Federal Plain Language Report Card. It judges how well agencies are complying with the Plain Writing Act of 2010.

A top grade of “A” went to 19 of 22 agencies covered by the law. That puts Education’s “D” in the lowest percentile, so to speak. Only State and Interior did worse, with an “F.” However, they could actually be better, but they refused to work with the grading group.